I can honestly call this some of the best recent death metal I've heard. It avoids the trappings of being retro (aping a specific older style, and generally as a result having a simple thudding sound about it, following known melodic archetypes too closely, etc.), having an extensive vocabulary of death metal technique, and effortlessly incorporates varying riffs of phrases long and short, chaotic and direct, into the interlocking city of structures that good death metal has always been. This is excellent.

The Melbourne horde rages on. Check out also Ignivomous. And of course our old Aussie article which left out Cemetary Urn in a vain attempt to seem elitist - but the embedded playlist has a more than decent Chicago live clip.

1. The leads are wildly inappropriate and disruptively intrusive, they're conventionally wanky and the tone is all wrong. These songs would be significantly improved by leads that are more in keeping with the texture and melodic sensibility of the rest of the music.

2. Vocals lack distinction and are rhythmically too regular, almost sing-song in their cadence. Again, something more of a piece with the rest of the music would help push the execution here from B+/A- to solid A. This is less of a problem on the "new album track" than on the two older songs.

3. It may just be the mp3 format, but it would be nice if the mix had more of a sense of space to it.

Am I the only one hearing a significant Demilich influence here? Obviously, as with much Aussie death metal, SadEx is one clear point of departure, but the melodies have less of that crusty, hardcore-beaten-into-epic-by-sheer-force Bolt Thrower thing going on, and more of a labyrinthine complexity with a distinct whiff of psychoactive ingredients.